Performance and Energy Conservation of 3GPP IFOM Protocol for Dual Connectivity in Heterogeneous LTE-WLAN Network

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance and energy efficiency of the 3GPP IFOM protocol in LTE-WLAN HetNets, proposing novel mechanisms and algorithms to optimize throughput, reduce energy consumption, and meet QoS demands.

Contribution

It introduces a new mechanism for throughput maximization and an energy-efficient optimization algorithm for IFOM-enabled UEs in heterogeneous networks.

Findings

Significant throughput gains with low latency achieved.

Energy cost substantially reduced while maintaining high throughput.

Trade-offs between throughput and energy consumption identified.

Abstract

For the 5th Generation (5G) networks, Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is considering standardization of various solutions for traffic aggregation using licensed and unlicensed spectrum, to meet the rising data demands. IP Flow Mobility (IFOM) is a multi access connectivity solution/protocol standardized by the Internet Engineering Task force (IETF) and 3GPP in Release 10. It enables concurrent access for an User Equipment (UE) to Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). IFOM enabled UEs have multiple interfaces to connect to HetNets. They can have concurrent flows with different traffic types over these networks and can seamlessly switch the flows from one network to the other. In this paper, we focus on two objectives. First is to investigate the performance parameters e.g. throughput, latency, tunnelling overhead, packet loss, energy cost etc. of IFOM enabled UEs (IeUs) in HetNets of LTE and WLAN. We have proposed a novel mechanism to maximize the throughput of IeUs achieving a significant throughput gain with low latency for the IeUs. We have explored further and observed a throughput energy trade off for low data rate flows. To address this, we also propose a smart energy efficient and throughput optimization algorithm for the IeUs, resulting in a substantial reduction in energy cost, while maintaining the high throughput at lower latency and satisfying the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the IeUs.